Web page-load time has just got mission critical. Year on year web users have been getting less and less tolerant of slow page load times.

This need for speed is peaking as the Internet is just starting to slowdown. And now Google say they  use page-load time for ranking. Its become an imperative for website and web app owners to measure, monitored and controlled page load-times. If they don't the consequences will be sever - loss of revenues, customers and reputation!!

A Harris 2008 survey found that consumers abandon or switch 42% of all transactions when they have a problem. This is up 12% on 2007. A Forrester report last year (2009) found that the situation is getting worse - the abandonment rate is at 61% if page load time is great than two seconds. Many of these abandonment's are caused by  technical and performance issues.

The 2008 Harris report also showed 84%  of online consumers share negatives  experience’s with others. The impact of downtime has other downsides. Google penalizes your long term Ads Quality Score when your site or landing page is down. And now Google rank on page-time time too!!

The web apps behind websites are also negatively impacted by slowdowns. Aberdeen Group found that '1 second delay in response times of web application can impact customer satisfaction by up 16%.' The effect is not an immediate loss of sales as with e-commerce. However the longer-term resulting loss of revenues and reputation is the same.

If website and web app providers aren't monitoring page-load times they must start now. They need to be alerted to immediate slowdowns and understand page-load time degradation over time. The consequences of not monitoring for slowdowns  can be server  - lost revenues, loss of customers and long-term brand damage.